Robert Machado

Dr. Robert Machado (he/him) works as an artist and professor within various fields and media. As an early member of the “lowercase sound” movement, discussed by scholars such as Arielle Saiber in “The Polyvalent Discourse of Electronic Music” (2007), since 2001 his experimental sound art under the name Civyiu Kkliu has been performed in galleries on the West and East Coast and published in the U.S., the UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria. His visual art has been displayed on the East and West Coast of the U.S. His most recent work includes the sonification of bioelectrical flora activity + compost de/recomposition (streaming live from Lancaster, PA as ck-flor at www.LocusSonus.org ), art as social practice, public poetics, cyanotypes (blueprints), small format Polaroid photography, and experimental film/video. 

Dr. Machado is Chair of the Department of Humanities, Director and Professor of the English Program, Chair of the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee, and founder of various initiatives and faculty-student organizations at Lebanon Valley College.

Research & Expertise

Dr. Machado’s research—academic and practice-based—involves the study of color across verbal and visual media, art as social practice, sound art, ecopoetics, the environmental humanities, early cinema and early photography, and the avant-garde. He is the founder and co-creator of two apps, the RainbowReader, a tool for corpus linguistics color research and data visualization; and CareerFinder, which helps students within the humanities to discover careers that match their emerging areas of interest and expertise. 

(Selected) 

theground, co-founded group with Athena Vinson (LVC ’25), part of Art+Feminism, an international organization committed to closing information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts, beginning with Wikipedia (2024). 

“Exercise 32,” “Exercise 34,” and “Preface,” The Book of Ghosts, ed. Isaac Fox, Shelf Fungus Press (2023). 

ck-flor (Lancaster, PA), Locus Sonus (Eco-art installation 24/7 live stream) (2022-) Locus Sonus, funded by the Ministère de la Culture Française and part of the Ecole Superieur d’Art d’Aix, is a research group whose primary interest is to “explore the ever-evolving relationship between sound, place and usage.” The eco-art project ck-flor (Lancaster, PA) is one of only seven sound installations in the US (as of 2023) and is the only one in PA. It is a live stream of floral bioelectric activity, compost de/recomposition, blank vinyl, and other sound elements. 

Featured artist, How We Hear Now, a participatory, collective artwork created by The ECOPOESIS Project (2021). A multi-year initiative led by the Architectural Ecologies Lab and MFA in Writing program at California College of the Arts.  

CareerFinder (application), founder and co-creator with Sam Beard (2021). 

Norte/Sur, co-translated book with Liam Schmidt and Carmen Garcia-Armero; Tijuana, MX: Kodama Cartonera (2021).  

Rainbow Reader (application), founder and co-creator with Denis Halilovic (Alpha, 2021) (Beta 2020). An open-source application for digital humanities scholarship that allows for new processes of textual analysis and data visualization. This tool advances the study of the use/absence, arrangement, distribution, and theorization of color words within verbal texts which, historically, have conceptualized color opposite “line/form” to help reinforce social hierarchies and ideologies, spheres of labor/power, and to encode transgressions. 

Civyiu Kkliu and Matt Baczewski, c60 tape and digital release, You Settle on Movement (Falt Records, France, 2021). Two editions, sold out. Based on a tape collaboration (2017-2020) with Matt Baczewski, founder of naanculpress.com. 

“The Micro-events + Micro-storie of Color vs. Line/Form,” Formalism and Its Discontents – An Interdisciplinary Conference, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University (February 23–24, 2017). 

“Metachromatics: The Historical Division Between Color and Line/Form as Analytic,” The Use of Color in History, Politics, and Art, Sung Shin Kim, ed. (University Press of North Georgia, 2016). 

“Poster Movies: Censorship, Paratext, and Watching Who You Are as You Watch,” Critical Foreword, Now Showing: An American Century at the Movies, Sept.2–Oct.16, 2016, Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery, Lebanon Valley College (2016). 

“Monochrome ‘Vandals’: A Female Vernacular Avant-Garde (?) in Late 19th/Early 20th C US Photography,” Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium (PASC), Locating the Avant-Garde, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (October 2015). 

Simple Destiny (film), sound art performance and event program and posters for Early Avant-Garde LIVE! Cinema LIVE! SoundArt Dance Poetry Song, Allen Theatre (March 23, 2015). 

“‘Blue Cows, Blue Trees, and Blue Faces … Go Do It!’: Alterity and Decoding Color Opposite Line/Form,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Ryerson University, Ontario, Toronto (March 2015).  

“Diegetic Frames and Photo-Cinematographic Perception: Picturing in Harold Frederic’s Illumination (1896),” The Language of Images, Laurence Petit and Nancy Pedri, eds., (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014). 

“Dziga Vertov’s Revolutionary Variety Show,” Early Popular Visual Culture 10.3 (2012). 

“John Corbin’s ‘Drift’: A Conversational Review by Louis Bury and Robert Machado,” On-Verge: Alternative Art Criticism (February 2012). 

“Untitled” (live), Phonography Meeting 20070823, compact disc (Winds Measure Recordings, 2011).  

“Watch Her Dance,” v-p v-f is v-n, c50 tape (Winds Measure Recordings, 2010). 

“A Year for Each (Side),” E/A Variations, Mp3 (Contour Editions, 2010). 

“The Politics of Applied Color in Early Photography,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9.1 (2010). 

“Metachromatics: Theorizing Applied Color in the Photocinematic Image,” Color and the Moving Image: History, Aesthetics, Theory, Archive, Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Bristol, England (July 2009). 

“111111111,” Table For Six: All Quiet?, compact disc (EE Tapes, 2008). 

“Reading Visual Music: War in Post-WWI Non-Objective Film,” The Experience of War in the Space Between, 1914-1945, The Space Between Society, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (June 2007). 

“Formalizing the Natural, Naturalizing the Formal: An Exchange Between the Non-Objective and the Mundane in the Transitioning Cinematic Avant-Garde,” The Documentary Tradition, Film & History League, Dallas, Texas, (November 2006). 

Live performance, Noise! Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, St. Marks Church, New York (May 13, 2006). 

“Subplots and ‘Insignificants’: Desdemona in the Background of Othello,” Tribute to Professor Oya Başak, Aslı Tekinay, ed. (Boğaziçi University Press, 2005). 

“Performance #1” and “Composition A” with Ilya Monosov, Architectures on Air and Other Works, compact disc (Elevator Bath, 2005). 

“Metal Coils and Plastic Forks on Vinyl” (live radio performance), Free103point 9, Brooklyn (August 2005).  

111111, 3-inch CD-R in artist-designed silver box (Banned Production, 2004).  

“111: A Sound Utility” (6.5 hours), One Night As, Resonance Art Radio, 104.4, London (January 25, 2004).  

The Art of Photography Show, La Jolla Art Association Gallery, San Diego (November 2004). 

1111111, compact disc (Bremsstrahlung, 2003). 

Art installation, Architect as Artist; Artist as Architect, Basile Gallery, in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects National Convention, San Diego (May 2003). 

“Untitled Lithography Film on Wood,” The Farm, San Diego (December 2003). 

“Color and Sound” (performance of a visual score by Civyiu Kkliu), Interchange, Melrose Light Space, Los Angeles (September 26, 2003). 

“CK.JR.IM,” Orf Kunstradio, Austria (November 9, 2003). 

Live performance, Day of Attention 002: Lowercase Sound, Aurophobe, Los Angeles (October 6, 2002). 

Live performance, Noun Sound: People, Place, Thing, 964 Natoma, San Francisco (January 18, 2002). 

“Ludmila Faulk,” Lowercase Sound, double compact disc (Bremsstrahlung, 2002). 

Dr. Machado teaches courses on interdisciplinary arts, writing, theory, US literature, film studies, and art as social practice.